Rice joining other elite schools offering free online courses

Updated 6:29 am, Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Rice University is going global by participating in a groundbreaking experiment that offers free online courses to people from around the world.

University officials announced on Tuesday that Rice is a new partner with Coursera, the first education platform to host content from multiple top research universities at one website. The courses don't provide credit toward a degree.

No applications are needed. Anyone with a computer and Internet connection can enroll.

"We're very excited to be on the ground floor of this," said Rice President David Leebron. "The landscape of higher education is changing dramatically. First, more people are seeking low-cost and free access and, at the same time, we see ways modern technology can enhance the educational experience for our students."

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More information about the courses and how to enroll is available at www.coursera.org.

Rice will offer pilot courses in general chemistry, software programming, electrical engineering, analytical chemistry and nanotechnology. The Web-based courses, expected to start in January, will include video lectures with frequent quizzes and interactive assignments.

Coursera was launched last fall by Stanford computer science professors Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng. Its mission is to educate millions of people via free online classes from top universities and professors.

More than 650,000 students from 190 countries have accessed Coursera's content. It has recorded more than 1.5 million course enrollments in 43 courses.

Rice students will benefit from the venture by using the video lectures as classroom resources, university officials said. "The idea is rather than using class time to convey information and collaborate outside class to synthesize information, you reverse the two functions," said chemistry professor John Hutchinson, who will teach a free chemistry course online.